Ithaca staff preview live expense and revenue dashboards on city website

City staff demonstrated new, public-facing expense and revenue dashboards during a Committee of the Whole training session, showing daily snapshots pulled from the city's Munis accounting system and available from the city budget page.

Alan, a city staff member, said the dashboards use data exported from Munis and update daily: "They're good for a guideline. They're good for some trending information, but they're not ever gonna be 100% accurate," because of normal processing delays for invoices, purchase orders and credit-card charges.

The presentation described two report views. An expenses report shows adopted budgets for recent years, year-to-date actuals for the 2025 fiscal year and prior-year actuals. A revenues report is structured by fund and shows major revenue categories such as property tax and sales tax. The presenter noted that the dashboards reflect what had been entered into Munis "as of this morning." He added the tool will be available on the city budget page and update daily throughout and beyond the budget season.

The staff member cautioned users about timing and interpretation: some expense lines may appear high early in the year when seasonal or front-loaded costs post (for example, snow removal or pool start-up costs) while other lines may appear unused because annual contracts or renewals have not yet been invoiced. He gave a concrete example for users: a clerk's office line with a $7,000 budget and about $2,000 spent so far, noting that midyear snapshots can mislead if interpreted as final totals.

The presenter also showed how the reports can be filtered by department, fund or program (he cited TCAT contract items, the parks department, the youth bureau and GIAC pool expenses as examples) and said the available list of views is expected to grow over time. He said some program labels in the report reflect legacy charge codes and that an apparent absence of numbers for a department (for example, "City Cemetery") may simply mean there is no standalone budget line rather than missing data.

Councilmember Clyde was thanked on the record for requesting the City Cemetery view during the demonstration. At least one council member praised the tool as "super informative." The presenter said the city plans to keep the dashboards online while it continues to add views and refine the data.

On technical questions, the presenter said he would follow up about whether export functionality is available from the public site. He also invited council members and the public to flag items that look incorrect so staff can confirm whether data imported properly.

No formal action, motion or vote was taken during the training. The session was informational: staff introduced the tool, described data caveats and committed to follow-up on export options and further refinements.